The article refers to the tediously-named article "Science Faculty's Subtle Gender Biases Favor Male Students" published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study itself was elegantly simple. The organizers sent one-page descriptions of potential job candidates to university professors in the sciences and asked them to assess the candidates for apparent competence, hireability, and potential for mentorship, as well as recommend a starting salary. Some professors received descriptions of male candidates, and others received descriptions of female candidates.
The catch? Every single job candidate was identical except for gender. Word-for-word, the female applicants were identical to their male candidates, except that the name "Jennifer" replaced the name "John".
The results are striking. Male professors rated female applicants as 17% less competent, 21% less hireable, and 16% less desirable for mentorship than male applicants, with a recommended salary 11% lower. Female professors were even harsher, rating the female applicants 19% less competent, 27% less hireable, and 17% less desirable for mentorship, with 15% lower recommended salaries.
Wait ... what?
Dr. Jo Handelsman, senior author of the study, stated that scientists often resisted the notion that they were themselves perpetrators of gender bias. They cite their training, according to Dr. Handelsman, saying they are experts in analyzing data in a neutral and rational fashion.
Anyone working in or around a STEM (science, technology, engineering, & mathematics) field, upon honest reflection, should not be able to seriously defend that position. Look around your classrooms or workplaces. Can you faithfully argue that they are somehow impervious to discrimination? Except for health care and a few other biology-related fields, men dominate both STEM education and the STEM workplace. As someone involved in programs in both science policy and technology law, I can anecdotally confirm that my studies and work environments have been heavily male-dominated.
But we needn't rely on anecdotal evidence. The Economics & Statistics Administration has given us hard figures. In a 2011 study titled "Women in STEM: A Gender Gap to Innovation", ESA laid out the following statistics:
- Women comprise 50.8% of the US population (according to the Census), 48% of the total workforce, and 49% of college-educated workers.
- Despite this, women comprise only 24% of the STEM workforce.
- Women's strongest representation in the STEM workforce is in physical and life sciences, where they make up 40% of the workforce. Their worst is in engineering, where they account for only 14%.
- 40% of STEM-educated men work in STEM occupations, compared to only 26% of STEM-educated women.
- There is a 14% wage gap between men and women in STEM jobs. (The national average is actually higher, at 21%.)
Many people will blame this on self-selection, inherent differences in the way men and women think, or the fact that more women take time off from careers for family reasons than men. Dr. Handelsman's study, however, suggests convincingly what should have been clear to see all along: potential employers and colleagues in STEM fields in the United States view women as less competent and less capable than their male counterparts.
Obviously, Dr. Handelsman's study has its limitations. It focused on a narrow segment of the population (science professors) and covered a very limited sample size (only 127 professors responded to the inquiry). I would like to see more studies in this area to present more conclusive evidence. But the numbers in this study are striking, and the implication is clear. There is a gender gap. There just is.
So, aside from the obvious, what can this study tell us? First of all, equality policy is really important. No, we don't live in a society that has triumphed over discrimination, and, no, we're not even close. And I'm not talking about "equal outcomes" here, I'm talking about opportunity: Dr. Handelsman's study suggests that the opportunities available for women in science are less achievable and less lucrative based solely on their gender. If we are to provide equal opportunity to all citizens, something really radical has to change. We as a society need to change not only our legal approach to discrimination but something fundamental in the way we think about equality. The Fair Pay Act was an important step along the way to narrowing the gender gap. But what we need is a committed and uncompromising effort in every sector of American life -- government, private, and non-profit -- to establish new social norms that deemphasize the arbitrary differences between us and reemphasize the ones that really matter, like actual performance. It starts with institutions like the National Academies of Sciences publishing studies that cast a light on these issues, and with government support for STEM education, and with policy choices that encourage excellence, and with societal choices that condemn discrimination. But it also requires us as a society to recognize and embrace the role of all aspects of our society, public and private, in encouraging excellence and discouraging discrimination.
The other important message this study can implicate is that we can often be our own worst enemy in our global competitiveness. I won't retread the extensive studies here, but overwhelming consensus is that Americans are lagging in science and mathematics performance. This can only hurt our global competitiveness in technology, innovation, and thought leadership. Unequal opportunity holds us back. Teen girls see the barriers holding back their mothers, sisters, aunts, and friends, and it affects them as well. I have a lot of cousins in their teens, and, trust me, they can tell. Sure, there are a lot of other factors harming our educational competitiveness as well, but a society that frustrates half its working population with curtailed opportunity and depressed wages is already losing the race right out of the gate.
I don't mean to slight the great gains that have been made over the past century; as a society, we've come a long way since universal suffrage. But we have a long way to go yet, and we can't let our successes become the enemy of progress. We need to start changing the way we view not just our solutions but the very problem of economic opportunity itself. A society with such pervasive discrimination cannot and will not sustain competitiveness in the 21st century.
* Warning: At the time of writing, the New York Times limits free access to their content to ten articles per month. Ordinarily I would prefer not to link to content behind a "semi-paywall" like this, but the New York Times has the original interview content from the article author and some stakeholders, so linking to the Times article seems like the responsible practice here. I encourage you to actually read the original study.
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